Three Easy Ways To Save Money On Your Engagement Ring

Three Easy Ways To Save Money On Your Engagement Ring is a post originally published on: Everything Finance – Everything Finance – Its all about Money!

Let’s not sugar coat it… buying an engagement ring can be a daunting process. From picking out a ring that your significant other will love, to planning the perfect proposal, and meanwhile thinking about how you’re going to pay for it all. In fact, this very thought alone will scare some couples so much that they will put off this promise of love and commitment simply because of the financial toll it could take. Thankfully, there are a few extremely easy ways to save A LOT of money on your engagement ring — and we’ll go ahead and tell you…it’s not just by getting a smaller diamond.

Know The Four C’s and Which One Is Most Important To YouYou’ve likely heard about the four c’s of diamonds — cut, clarity, color and carat. Each characteristic of the diamond has its own perks, but it’s important to know which one(s) is most important to you…and to convey that to your jeweler. Let’s say your significant other cares most about the size of the ring. In this case, carat might be the #1 ‘C’ to you. However, your jeweler should know that certain settings, such as a halo ring, can make a center diamond appear larger. This might mean that you now have more bandwidth on color and clarity.

If you are working with a diamond expert, they should be able to take your feedback and find a ring that works in (or under) your budget AND meets your requirements. Remember, the person you’re talking to about your ring should NOT just be trying to rack up the price and snag a great commission check. If they’re a professional, they will work within your means to find the exact ring you’re looking for.

Avoid Large Chains During The Holidays (and always…)

There’s a few reasons to avoid the chain diamond stores when shopping for your engagement ring…especially during the holidays.

First of all, the stores are already going to be extremely busy and crowded. You likely will not get the same one-on-one attention with a jeweler that you need for this important purchase. Not to mention, with so many people in the stores, the best-priced and most popular rings will go first.

Here’s something you may not know about the popular stores like Tiffany’s and Zales — they mark up their diamonds up to 100% from the wholesale price. Not only is this just down right greedy, it’s unnecessary. Thankfully, you have alternate choices on where to buy your diamonds. Which leads us to point number three.

Go With Lab-Grown

If you’re in the market for an engagement ring, you’ve likely heard some recent hype around lab created diamonds. However, there is a lot of misinformation about them — especially coming from mined diamond sellers.

Here’s the gist: environmentally friendly, ethical and less expensive. Seems too good to be true, right? It’s not. Let’s break it down piece by piece.

Environmentally Friendly

Let’s be honest, the diamond mining industry is destroying our environment — especially our oceans from the giant vacuums that are being used to suck up seabed to find diamonds. With the new technology that allows scientists to create lab-grown diamonds, mined diamonds are 100% unnecessary! As with any invention we’ve come across in history, lab-grown diamonds eliminate a problem with a better solution — in this case the problem is the destruction of our earth.

Ethical

When you walk into stores that offer exclusively mined diamonds, there’s absolutely no way to know where the diamonds are sourced. Buying a lab-grown diamond is the only way to 100% guarantee that the origin of your diamond is clean and no one was hurt or mistreated to get it. If you want to stay away from blood diamonds, buying lab-grown is your only option.

Less Expensive

By growing a diamond in a lab, the supply chain loses a few links — allowing the prices to decrease. However, the quality remains. In fact, lab-grown diamonds are chemically, physically and optically the exact same as mined diamonds. The FTC has even changed their definition of ‘diamond’ to include those grown in a lab. So, you’re getting the same quality at a fraction of the cost — up to 20-30% less.

Although you may be feeling like there are 5 C’s of diamonds — cut, color, clarity, carat and cost — lab-grown diamonds give you an easy way to save money on your engagement ring.

Three Easy Ways To Save Money On Your Engagement Ring is a post originally published on: Everything Finance – Everything Finance – Its all about Money!